Various devices have been developed that relate to bottle holders and the like. U.S. Pat. No. 3,746,179 discloses hanging racks for the securing of containers such as bottles for wines and liquors and the maintenance thereof in substantially horizontal position, in such manner that the labels are in full view and the position of the containers may be adjusted by loosening or tightening the retaining members forming a part of the rack.
U.S. Pat. No. 5,826,731 discloses a wine rack with four wire panels of bottle holders and a wire base assembly, each being a separate component and packaged together in a small carton. The two lower panels are fitted into the base assembly, the two upper panels are fitted into the tops of respective lower panels, and the panels are all clipped together. The two lower panels are also cradled in a cross bar of the base assembly. All of the bottles, when held in storage positions in the rack, are sloped downwardly at an angle towards their cork ends. The bottles on one panel-column side face one direction and those on the other face the other direction. The entire unit with its snap-fit and clipped connections and its balanced bottle arrangement can be safely lifted at its top when fully loaded with bottles.
WO 99/53807 discloses a bottle carrier especially for wine bottles, that comprises frame with end stop opposite compression spring between which bottle is placed, frame vertical part tops terminated by hooks and bottom cross member having complementary fixing grooves. The carrier consists of a modular system for maintaining pressed, horizontally and suspended one or several bottles with their labels still visible. It consists of a frame with a stop device and a compression spring between which are respectively engaged a bottle base and neck. The distance between the stop device and the cylindrical spring is such that it maintains the inserted bottle pressed. Each frame has at its lower level on the crosspiece two grooves, and at its upper level two hooks designed to cause the modules to be mutually locked. The centre-to-centre spacing between the hooks is slightly greater then the centre-to-centre spacing between the grooves.
All the methods described above have not yet provided satisfactory solutions to the problem of securing of containers such as bottles for wines and liquors and the maintenance thereof in substantially horizontal position.
It is an object of the present invention to provide a method and apparatus for securing of containers such as bottles for wines and liquors and the maintenance thereof in substantially horizontal position, which is reliable, foldable.
It is another object of the present invention to provide a method and apparatus for the securing of containers such as bottles for wines and liquors, in which the substantially horizontal position of bottles is maintained even after one or more bottles are removed.
Other objects and advantages of the invention will become apparent as the description proceeds.